Holding the Keyes to success
It's five thirty in the evening and the dainty, almost doll-like Marian Keyes pops her head around the door of the drawing room in her Victorian house in Dun Laoghaire.
She's dressed in an olive-green polo, a grey skirt and black, size 3 wedges. If it had been any earlier, she'd have been wearing a nightie. Then again, she mightn't have come down at all. Marian rarely rises before five.
It isn't fear of facing the world that has the thirty something novelist tucked up in the bed (though she's been there, too, with depression and episodes of melancholia) - but her work. Marian has written her numerous bestsellers by waking up at 7.30 am, putting a jumper on over her nightie, turning on her laptop and typing away. "Some people feel that ruins bed but mercifully, it doesn't for me, and it works for the writing. If I sat down at a desk, I'd be too intimidated."
It's an astonishing confession, given that she's a hugely popular novelist with a seven-figure book deal and her novels translated into 15 languages, including Hebrew and Greek. But you believe her, maybe because she's disarmingly frank about everything else and endearingly upfront about weaknesses the rest of us tend to conceal.
Unlike a lot of other novelists, Marian is the first to admit she has drawn on her own experiences for some of her novels. The first was Watermelon, a simple love story. But Rachel's Holiday was a romance set in an addiction centre (when she was 30 the author battled successfully with alcohol addiction) and Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married is about depression. Yet they wouldn't be bestsellers if they weren't also funny and Marian is that in real life - self-deprecatingly funny (though her voice is so light you might miss the barbs). And not every bit of every story is drawn from personal experience.
She attributes her alcohol addiction to low self-esteem, something she feels she was born with:
It can't have helped her self-esteem when she was deemed unsuitable for the one career she was interested in - writing. "I applied to what was then the NIHE to do journalism and when I didn't get it, I was heartbroken. I was so bad then I believed they were right, so I put a lid on it."
Instead she went to England where she worked as an accounts clerk for nine years. "At first, the desire to write lay dormant but I was a great reader and I'd be quite critical. I loved things I could identify with and there was very little, so I started writing myself." Still, her first introduction to creative writing was through short stories. "They were all bizarre; one was about a credit card who fell in love with its owner. It takes a while to find your voice."
When she found hers, it was one that many readers could identify with and soon publishers were knocking on her door with extraordinary offers. Penguin clinched the deal with a seven-figure sum.
With long dark hair framing her tiny face, the thought strikes you that she's far too young to have all this money; she herself doesn't appear very comfortable about it either. "I'm mortified, I think it's vulgar to flaunt money. It's wonderful to have this enormous faith in my writing, but I write about ordinary people. I'm ordinary and I want to protect my ordinary person status. It's ridiculous, really. I'm a left-of-centre and we live in a capitalist country but come the revolution ....." She hears herself and laughs, but adds: "Really, I mean it, it causes me pain on one level."
Again, though you know a big book deal is the one thing all writers dream about, you believe Marian's protestations. She's tiny yet as she curls up in a chair you sense she's trying to make herself smaller. Maybe invisible.
In fact, she's just inordinately sensitive - "I've often felt I'm missing a layer" - and says it can be a pain to be that way, like in the early days, reading even mildly critical reviews of her books. It can be handy too for there is within her a great reservoir of emotion to be tapped into for the characters in her books.
Her latest, Last Chance Saloon (nominated Book of the Month by Waterstone's in England) is about three friends, one of whom suffers from cancer. Marian doesn't have personal experience of cancer so she had to research the disease; but she knows all about the emotions. And again, despite the dark subject matter, there's loads of humour in the characters who are all Irish but living in London.
Marian lived in England for 11 years but came home two-and-a-half years ago. In May 1998, she moved into her beautiful Victorian four-bedroomed house (admittedly one of the good things about her book deal) which she shares with her English husband, Tony, who has been with her through bad times and good and who now manages her affairs. Tony was really the one behind their decision to come back to Ireland.
It will come as no surprise that Marian's favourite room is a bedroom. Her own bedroom is, she insists, a mess but she loves the guest bedroom which is bright and unfussy and uncluttered.
The guest bedroom is so inviting it's no wonder it's not short of guests. The walls are painted in different shades of turquoise, the floorboards are stripped back to their original polished state and the furniture is modern and interesting. The white curtains have a swirly pattern reflecting the design of the wrought iron bed (made by Beak, a young Dublin Company which has relocated to Belfast) and the wrought-iron towel-holder was made by their friend Liam.
Marian had the blue-grey wardrobe and chest of drawers shipped over from London. She bought the matching leather chair and footstool in London.
It's things like nice furniture which they miss about London. (And maybe the shoe shops as well: it's not easy to get size 3's in Dublin.) Tony has really taken to life in Ireland. He's even learning Irish and has been going to night classes in Conradh na Gaeilge for the past three years.
Marian confines her night classes to a creative writing group. "We do writing exercises to stretch us, we criticise each other very gently and praise a lot. There's always more to learn. Take me out and shoot me if I ever get lazy and take it for granted."
An unlikely event, that.
"Lucy Sullivan is about depression and being brought up by an alcoholic father - my poor da is a two-drinks-on-a Saturday night man. He's lovely and inordinately proud of me."
"Some people are born with blue eyes, it's as simple as that. I had a very ordinary upbringing: two brothers and sisters. They're grand. I think you just come into the world of propensities and they meld with life's experiences. We live in addictive times, but the more openness and acknowledgement there is, the better for everyone."
"I'd make noises about coming home: most Irish do, most don't mean it. The reality terrified me. When I left Dublin, it was a grim, grey place, practically a theocracy. London is godless and I liked that. But anyway, both Dublin and I had mellowed, we met each other half-way. Now when Tony and I go back to London, we're the big hicks!"
"I create chaos everywhere, but this is the one room that is not chaotic so I come in and sit here and I feel serene." That's when there's no-one staying.
"We do have guests; we have swarms of them, what with Dublin being sexy and having lived in England for so long."
"It's called a loge chair. We first saw it in the Conran Shop but you'd have to go home and lie down after hearing the price. Then we saw it - the exact same chair - in a shop called Geoffrey Drayton at half the price."